|
mercredi 12 mars 2003 |
margueritte at the front of the pantheon.
[ 32 ]
the pantheon was an odd, inspiring, and eclectic museum of french history. it is a huge cavernous and windowless space, very inward looking, almost fortress like. it was easy to imagine mobs fighting pitched battles over this symbolic structure.
the guards at the entrance advised us to descend to the crypts below right away because they would close fifteen minutes before the building closed that evening. we walked among the honored dead: voltaire, dumas, victor hugo, marie and pierre curie, malraux, and many others. there are still many vacancies available in the crypts.
upstairs in the main vault was a recreation of foucault's famous pendulum experiment which proved the rotation of the earth.